When even Zogby has Obama down...

When even a Zogby poll shows Obama's ratings plummeting, you know The One is in trouble. Zogby has a reputation for a bit of liberal bias, and you can see that he desperately wants to avoid mentioning that his poll shows more people disapprove of Obama's job performance than approve of it.
Zogby's headline from last Friday (7/24) notes that Obama's approval has dropped to 48%. However, it's not until the end of the first paragraph that they mention that his disapproval rating is at 49 -- the first time it has exceeded his approval number. And, while it could just be a matter of style, I also note that the 49% disapproval is the only number in the first paragraph which is written out in words rather than with numbers. (Even if it was a matter of style, such as not beginning a sentence with a number, that could easily have been fixed by adding a word at the beginning of the sentence.) Maybe I'm just being a poll conspiracy theorist, but writing out that number in words rather than a simple "49%" would seem to too make it easier for someone quickly scanning the poll article to miss that information.
As I've mentioned when discussing other recent polls, I believe the results among Independent voters are absolutely critical. And the Zogby poll provides further evidence that Obama is in trouble. Only 40% of Independents say Obama is doing a good or very good job. Also, "Slightly more than half of political independents (56%) view the country has headed in the wrong direction, while 31% say the U.S. is on the right track."
As Obama's poll numbers fall, his ability to push on-the-fence legislators to vote for his government takeovers of everything also wanes -- luckily for the nation. It is the fact of Obama's rapidly decreasing popularity which gives me optimism that neither health care "reform" nor cap-and-tax will pass this year (or next.)